"Yes. Good chap enough once on a day, but can't afford to
be seen with him now." The soaker is amazed to find that women are
afraid of him a little, and shrink from him--in fact, the only people
who are cordial with him are the landlords, among whom he is treated as
a sort of irresponsible baby. "I may as well have his money as anybody
else. He shan't get outrageously drunk here, but he may as well moisten
his clay and keep himself from being miserable. If he gets the jumps in
the night that's his look-out." That is the soaker's friend. The man is
not unkind; he is merely hardened, and his morals, like those of nearly
all who are connected with the great Trade, have suffered a twist. When
the soaker's last penny has gone, he will receive from the landlord many
a contemptuously good-natured gift--pity it is that the lost wastrel
cannot be saved before that weariful last penny huddles in the corner of
his pocket.

While the harrowing descent goes on our suffering wretch is gradually
changing in appearance: the piggish element that is latent in most of us
comes out in him; his morality is sapped; he will beg, borrow, lie, and
steal; and, worst of all, he is a butt for thoughtless young fellows.
The last is the worst cut of all, for the battered, bloodless, sunken
ne'er-do-well can remember only too vividly his own gallant youth, and
the thought of what he was drives him crazed.

There is only one end; if the doomed one escapes _delirium tremens_ he
is likely to have cirrhosis, and if he misses both of these, then dropsy
or Bright's disease claims him. Those who once loved him pray for his
death, and greet his last breath with an echoing sigh of thankfulness
and relief: he might have been cheered in his last hour by the graceful
sympathy of troops of friends; but the State-protected vice has such a
withering effect that it scorches up friendship as a fiery breath from a
furnace might scorch a grass blade. If one of my joyous, delightful lads
could just watch the shambling, dirty figure of such a failure as I have
described; if he could see the sneers of amused passers-by, the timid
glances of women, the contemptuous off-hand speech of the children--"Oh!
him! That's old, boozy Blank;" then the youths might well tremble, for
the woebegone beggar that snivels out thanks for a mouthful of gin was
once a brave lad--clever, handsome, generous, the delight of friends,
the joy of his parents, the most brilliantly promising of all h